About This Page
OK, I know that there aren't many birds in the following videos, but 2020 was a pretty lean year for my photo-birding endeavors, and I wanted something new to fill the gap. So for a while I plan to post time-lapse videos and scenery images here on my Home page. You can still find the bird pages through the menus at the left or by using the Search pane.
These videos were made with inexpensive WyzeCam security cameras, either the v2 Pan and Tilt or the newer v3, which does excellent infrared videos for catching deer and cloud activity at night. The camera is set to take one picture every three seconds, for three hours. This results in a 2-minute video of approximately 480 MB. I then edit the video and add a sound track and render it for the Web.
I mounted the WyzeCam v3 on a tripod and placed it on our deck, facing Dungeness Bay, overlooking Dungeness Spit with Victoria in the background, or on the ground next to the front porch facing the Olympics. Some of the videos are shot through the front window, which works well in some light conditions. The v3 records in color well after sunset, but eventually switches to infrared, which is basically black and white. With infrared, every bug or rain drop or snow flake in range produces a white streak. With time-lapse everything speeds up so it can get pretty frenetic. I find it mesmerizing if I can find the right music to go with it.
May 15, 2021
Denny sent a text last night that three planets would be visible along with a setting crescent moon. He said if I looked for the thin crescent moon, then Venus would be low to the horizon and Mercury would be between Venus and the moon. Mars would be above and to the left of the moon. It was cold and windy so I decided to point a camera at the moon and watch from inside. I scheduled time-lapse videos to catch the action and hoped that the fog wouldn't move in. I didn't stay up to watch, and when I checked the video this morning it was not the planets that caught my attention.
Space Invaders?
- May 14, 2021: (22 MB) This 30-second time-lapse video covers about 45 minutes in real time, About 16 seconds into the video you will see a stream of lights shooting up from above the tree near the bottom of the screen. At 22 seconds there is a much longer stream of lights. What in the world was that? Space invaders? Swamp gas? I was clueless. I had to view the playback in real time to count the number of lights that sped by.
- May 14, 2021: (111 MB)
The elapsed time on this video is about 20 minutes, from 11:29 PM until 11:58 PM. I've sped it up by a factor of four, so you only have to watch for a couple minutes. When this video begins look just above the big tree at the bottom of the screen. In the first 40 seconds you will see a string of ten white lights traveling straight up on the screen and disappearing near the top. A few seconds later another string of 49 lights follow a similar path. The audio track is an extract from NorthSound's Hole in the Wall, from the Echoes of the Olympic National Park CD.
I had no idea what the lights were, and watched the time-lapse video several times trying to figure it out. If it had been just one light moving across the sky I'd have called it a satellite. Several go over every night. But 10, and then 49 of them six minutes later? When I described my alien invasion to Denny he just said "Those are Musk's toys." Hmmm...I looked it up and indeed thay are. Currenetly Elon Musk has deployed approximately 360 Starlink satellites in orbit, to beam the Internet to Earth from space. The plan is to deploy between 12,000 and 42,000 of these satellites in a mega constellation.
March 6, 2021
The International Space Station orbits the earth every 90 minutes at approximately 17,100 mph. NASA has a great web site that shows eactly when the ISS will be visible overhead and and exactly where to look in the sky. (I've put a link to it at the bottom of my Weather Links page in the footer of this page.) The space station is only visible for a few hours before and after sunrise or sunset, since we can only see it with the sun reflecting off it against a dark background. There are currently seven people on board,two women and five men.
International Space Station
- March 6, 2021: (50 MB) This morning it was visible over Sequim from 04:29 - 04:31 and again from 06:02 - 06:09. In the following video, my east-facing camera picked it up at 04:30:10 in the upper left of the screen and followed it down until it disappeared in the clouds 90 seconds later. Then at 06:03:17 my north-facing camera picked it up emerging above a cloud and followed it straight up until it disappeared above at 06:04:39. The audio track is an extract from Stardust by Artie Shaw and His Orchestra - 1949.
February 27, 2021
After two days of rain and high winds, last night the skies cleared overhead and the wind stopped. Hoping this would happen I had scheduled time-lapse videos from 04:00-07:00 hoping to capture the International Space Station pass over at 05:10 this morning. I knew one camera was oriented properly to the East Northeast to catch it before disappearing below the horizon. The other camera was pointed Southwest and should have been pointed Northwest but the wind was still blowing 30 mph when I went to bed and I just didn't feel like climbing up on the deck to try to orient it. Fortunately, that camera captured the full moon descending just before sunrise.
International Space Station
- Feb 27, 2021 : (22 MB) This infrared video begins with three minutes of real-time video that I sped up to play in about 45 seconds. Look for the space station to appear almost immediately in the upper left of the screen. Then it transitions to time-lapse video that starts five seconds before the space station comes into view at the upper left of the screen. You have to watch closely because the space station goes over the horizon in just three seconds. But the rest of the video is worth watching. The light from the full moon makes it look like daylight, and as the moon sets behind the camera the shadow of the house grows and the light fades away just before dawn. The audio track is Bela Fleck & The Flecktones' "Bonnie & Slyde" track from their UFO TOFU album.
Full Moon Setting
- Feb 27, 2021 : (24 MB) This is an infrared time-lapse video.The moon was full at 12:17, and the camera picked it up at 04:00. I stopped the video at the point that it changed from infrared to daylight video. Watch closely at 15 seconds and you'll see a jet flying west halfway between the moon and the mountains. Just as the moon is about to pass out of camera view the snow on the ridges of the Olympics lights up from the sun. The audio track is "One Quiet Night" by the Pat Metheny Group.
February 11, 2021
Looking North over Dungeness Bay towards Victoria
- Feb 06, 2021 : (16 MB) I hadn't anticipated that the camera would pick up the gentleman who was pruning our apple tree, nor did I anticipate the wind picking up suddenly and a 35 mph gust toppling the tripod. Happily, a deck chair blocked the tripod from falling to the deck and no damage was done, other than the abrupt conclusion to the video. Audio: Jerry Douglas - Dobro
- February 9, 2021 : (43 MB) I like this video for the cloud action, the changing light conditions from infrared to daylight and back to infrared hours later, as well as the sunlight and shadows, the boats moving past, and the lights of Victoria. Audio: Jerry Douglas - Dobro
- February 10, 2021 : (63 MB) This video captured some rain and snow action. It looks much nastier than it really was, especially in the infrared part. Audio: Jerry Douglas - Dobro
Infrared Videos
- January 25, 2021 : (23 MB) This is the first night I placed the WyzeCam v3 outside at night to see if we had any critters roaming around. It appears that the local deer herd likes to sleep in the front yard and wake up to snack on the lush green clover periodically. Audio: Outback - Hold On
- January 28, 2021 : (39 MB) More deer and cloud action. Audio: Herb Alpert - Whipped Cream
Clouds Over the Olympic Mountains
- January 7, 2020: (23 MB) Audio: Bela Fleck - Two-Part Invention No. 13 on Perpetual Motion
- January 9, 2020: (23 MB) Audio: Edgar Meyer - Gigue - on Bach Unaccompanied Cello Suite on Double Base
Snow
- January 14, 2020: (35 MB Audio: Louis Armstrong - What a Wonderful World - on What a Wonderful World
- January 16, 2020: (29 MB) Audio: Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell - Dueling Banjos on Apalacian Stomp-Bluegrass Classics
Landscaping
- December 18, 2018: (78 MB) This is a real-time video of the C&J Excavating crew digging new dry well.
- July 17-18, 2019: (87 MB) Crew from New Dungeness Nursery creating new planting areas. Audio: Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli - Swing from Paris and Sweet Georgia Brown on Swing from Paris.
- October 3-4, 2019: (40 MB) Randy of Excel Services removing sod and spreading top soil. Audio: Lester Flatt and Earl Scrugs - Foggy Mountain Breakdown on Appalacian Stomp-Bluegrass Classics
- October 12, 2019: (52 MB) Javan and Christy of JC Hydroseeding spraying clover seed. Audio: Boogie Woogie Kid - Thumper on Boogie Woogie Kid
